A simple mind shift that could change everything for you

In a world where we’re all pressured into knowing exactly what we should be doing for work, it’s easy to get disappointed when you feel confused about your career.

Your social media feed is full of other people getting job promotions or taking the leap into entrepreneurship. Meanwhile you’re stuck wondering what to do next.

While you may be thinking that being confused is a bad thing, it’s probably exactly what you need to create a breakthrough.

A few weeks ago, I was at a conference talking with a group of people about career progression. I asked the guy next to me what he wanted to do for a career and he bluntly replied, “I actually have no idea.”

Maybe it was the way he said it or that it completely caught me off guard, but I literally laughed out loud and gave him a high five. This was the most genuine answer I’d ever heard.

People just don’t do this!

We are so pressured into having it all figured out that many of us can’t even imagine being so upfront. Maybe a bit of vulnerability is exactly what we need, because at the end of the day no one has it all figured out.

In fact, just a few minutes after the group broke, another guy from the group, a recent Columbia grad with a great job as a lawyer, confessed that he too was confused. On the outside he seemed totally confident in his career. Yet, he was just as lost as the other guy — just scared to admit it publicly.

Whether you are a lawyer, an entrepreneur, or a recent college grad — it’s okay be to be confused.

As Tony Robbins says, “confusion comes right before a breakthrough.”

Because being confused simply just means that your outcome doesn’t match your expectation. What you want isn’t what you currently have and you aren’t sure.

From here, you can do one of two things:

Change your expectation

Change your outcome

While changing your outcome is the ultimate goal, it’s not always possible right away. So if you are confused, good.

Now, start by taking a step back and rethink how you can shift your expectations so you are no longer needlessly stressing yourself out.

Here is one of the best ways in which I’ve found help bring clarity to a muddy situation.

Let go of the “need to know”

Whenever you have a problem, all you want is to fix the problem and move on, right?

Same goes for your career. You get impatient and frustrated. Fed up with your boss, you lack of a promotion or whatever else is causing your confusion in the first place. All you want is to just want to know what to do.

Unfortunately, there is no clear answer to this. The fact is that you will never know and are needlessly stressing yourself out, which fuels your frustration even more.

The best thing you can do is to focus on where you are at right now, and make decisions based on what’s in front of you. Right now. Today.

Letting go of the “need to know” will open up so many more opportunities. It will eliminate your stress and help you see things more clearly, which will eventually lead to what you wanted in the first place — clarity through all of the confusion.

Turning Confusion to Clarity

At the end of the day, everyone wants to be happier in the work that they do. Being confused is typically not a point in which we want to get to, but it’s something that many people experience on their career paths.

This confusion can be a good thing or it can ruin you depending on what you do with it. What you do with it, is up to you, but hopefully I’ve provided some helpful technique that will turn your confusion into clarity.

If you are still stuck and need help, you can grab a copy of my Success Toolkit that is packed with tools to help you create the breakthroughs you are looking for.

Hello, my name is Scott Bradley and I help young professionals cut the B.S. so they can figure out what they actually want in their careers. As a speaker, writer, and a coach I have dedicated my life to helping success-driven entrepreneurs and corporate professionals find and do work that they love. Grab a copy of my Success Toolkit, the most comprehensive set of resources to building a remarkable career.

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“People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills . . . There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind. . . . So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.”